AVCA Top 25 (9/7/21)

The AVCA has released the Week 1 Top 25 Poll (a tad late, I must say). We’ve got real results to go by now with some teams not having seen the floor for almost two years. With all that data now in front of the voters, I can now be my mean-spirited old self and start criticizing!

Once again we had a boat load of voters, which does present a very evil problem because it’s so difficult now to step through all of the ballots! There were 90 first place votes after there being 89 in the preseason. Of course, it’s also possible that the 90th voter actually was there and just voted on someone that didn’t make the Top 25. Intriguing, right!?! Now, I paged through the ballots and found only 69 (+ or – 3 because it wasn’t easy) real-life voters, which may sound like some Arizona ninja-vote-counting conspiracy theory but there is a reason for this. My understanding is that each conference gets two voters but they may decide to skip a week or weeks or season. The AVCA normalizes their vote so that there is always the same number of votes cast. The way they do this is to figure out the ranking based on the real-life voters and then create vapor voters that mimic those results. So, in this case, Trinity finished first so they get assigned the additional 21 vapor voting first place votes. This is why the Total Points is “Total Points Adjusted”.

Trinity Tigers are our top team getting 53 first place votes and 2123 total points. There was actually a tie between Emory and Johns Hopkins for second. Emory received 8 first place votes while JHU received 22. In my poll, I had Johns Hopkins first and Trinity second. Rounding out the top 5 were Colorado College (6 first place votes) and Carthage (1 first place vote).

For the West Region, we also had CMS at 6th and Mary Hardin-Baylor at 12th. In the Receiving Votes section, Southwestern had the most points not to make the Top 25. From the West there was also UT-Dallas, Whitworth, UC Santa Cruz, St. Thomas (it’s the Texas St. Thomas, people!), Chapman and Cal Lutheran. So, a good showing for Region X but a little optimistic in some cases.

The highest team with a defeat, like in my poll, was Calvin (5-1). The AVCA still has them in the top 10, which is the power of being a powerhouse program. The next team is Juniata who is listed at 2-4! Except that’s not right as they should be 2-1. Expect that to be corrected if it already hasn’t. Two teams with (real) multiple losses still in the rankings are St. Benedict and Muskingum, which is kind of silly at this point.

I’m happy to see my Southwestern team sitting at 26th although if there is a Region X team the voters are sleeping on it’s Whitworth.

There were 5 teams that dropped out of the preseason rankings; UT-Dallas, Otterbein, BSC, Susquehanna and Elmhurst. The biggest entry from a team that wasn’t ranked was UW-Eau Claire that shows up at 13. Expect things to get better in a few weeks but there will always be something strange going on in the AVCA Top 25. Other teams that jumped into the rankings were WashU, UW-Whitewater, Augsburg and Babson. Bowdoin and Tufts are the only teams not to have played a match but still be ranked.

I will be the first to admit that I didn’t put a lot of time into my Top 25 but let’s look at some of the differences. St Olaf (15th) was my highest ranked team not to make the AVCA rankings. Babson at 16 was another but there were a few more. On the AVCA rankings, Chicago came in at 9th but didn’t make my rankings. As I wrote in my rankings, I just thought they lost too much to be included. With that said, it’s a great program that will recruit well so don’t be surprised if the AVCA is right on this one.

The programs that didn’t play in the spring did take it on the chin in this one. Only two New England schools are ranked – Bowdoin and Tufts. Only CMS is ranked from the SCIAC. I don’t see any New York teams with Clarkson just missing out.

All of this will get corrected to a point during the year so let’s just enjoy the fact that we have a poll/ranking to make fun of for a couple of weeks! One final reminder! This ranking means nothing with regards to at-large selections! This is for fun and we thank the AVCA for doing it. Just don’t get caught up in it. The RAC Regional Rankings are the rankings to watch out for and they won’t come out until October.